Hot Air on TV tonight

Alister Barry’s Hot Air, a superb documentary on the slow and sorry evolution of climate policy and politics in New Zealand is getting its first TV airing tonight on Maori TV at 8-30pm. Alister wrote about his film at Hot Topic back in July, and according to the Listener, it makes for “compelling and absolutely terrifying” viewing. If you miss tonight’s showing, Hot Air will be available to stream from the Maori TV web site. Recommended.

24 thoughts on “Hot Air on TV tonight”

Interesting whatt an economist said about the NZIER: up untill the 1990’s they were respectabile but then groups like the NZIER started taking money for reports and were compromised (in this case at odds with “the consensus
among policymakers” ).

It’s a pity the climate change issue has morphed into left versus right since the left are associated with a knapsack of political correctness, loathing of western society, destruction of national identity etc.

That was a really good documentary. The eye-opener for me was that Solid Energy was secretly commissioning anti-AGW/ETS and appeared to be colluding with the Business Roundtable. That is a real no-no for an SOE and its a shame they weren’t bought into line before crashing and costing the taxpayer millions.
It’s a shame that National no longer has principled intellectuals like Simon Upton. David Parker seemed to have a very good handle on what was going on.

Certainly the film had alot in common with LOTR, except it was the bad guys who won in the end, not realising that the power of the ring is not as important as middle earth itself which is slowly sinking into an abyss.

This blog site has alot of parallels to LOTR too with protagonists and antagonists. I would say Gareth would be the character equivalent to Gandalf, not to mention CTG and Nigelj would be Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. Let’s see no prizes for guessing who would be Gollum with a hissing and whining in every post, and who cries every time he gets told off by Frodo.

Some, perhaps unlike yourself, actually watched the show. Some, perhaps unlike yourself, progress beyond looking at the messengers to listening to the message itself. Some, perhaps unlike yourself, are able to connect the dots and comprehend what it all means. And some, perhaps unlike yourself, still have their entire life before them and wish to inherit a livable planet to future generations. Some, unlike yourself, are disturbed by the message and what it means in terms of the dreams of a sustainable and human enterprise.
Some, perhaps like yourself, fail at comprehending the message and instead attack the messengers…..

I watched the video, Thomas, and was horrified as you were at the peaking load gas fired power plant built in the Taranaki
This modern efficient peaking power plant can ramp up in 10 minutes and provide the instantaneous shortfall from wind and solar.

Horrific, and a bleak future for us all.
Think off the children

We should be building lignite power stations like the Eco friendly Germans.

When did NZ last have blackouts from insufficient supply? Demand is not really increasing either due to improved efficiencies and increased cogen. There have been issues in the past but I would argue that was due to poor hedging by the monopolistic Electricorp. Why build coal or gas plants when there are so many geothermal opportunites available? The Stratford station does serve a useful purpose but it’s not cost-effective to run continuously.

Gary, the reason you don’t get power cuts is because we have peak load CCGT power stations providing fast response times, the ones that the documentary were bemoaning.
If you want power cuts, then move to the Mackenzie. We get plenty here. The petrol generator has been a good investment. Not very cheap to run, and definitely not environmentally friendly

First off, I did actually get a power cut that lasted two hours from about 2 mins after my last comment

Secondly, the assertion is that electricity generation consists of base load, follow on load and peak load. If any of these fail then you get power cuts or variation in the voltage and frequency of supply that can damage electrical equipment
Unfortunately there isn’t any public material, as far as I know, that explains how the NZ grid operates. em6live gives a snapshot but aggregated data costs $10,000 from what I hear

I used to live near Paremoremo. Trees felled the lines every time the wind blows – right in the “city” now – not too different from your McKenzie basin. When the last big storm went through we heard that 40,000 customers had lost power – probably most in rural Auckland for much the same reason. Where I live now the lines never seem to come down!

One would of course want offline generation, but the lines companies will want that new system seen on telly tonight, which Tait has been trialing near Christchurch somewhere, so actual areas of damage can be closely defined and other customers kept on grid.

I watched this documentary a few weeks ago and thought it was excellent. Alister Barry created a compelling, and slightly depressing, narrative from the archival footage. Hopefully he makes a sequel in the future, with a happier ending.